


Happiness is

by Helenistic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Derek gets a dog, M/M, Set a vague amount of years after season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 16:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14876921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helenistic/pseuds/Helenistic
Summary: A dog finds Derek





	Happiness is

**Author's Note:**

> So I was on Mibba today deleting all my stuff so someone doesn't google me and find six year old fan fiction I wrote, and I found this sterek that I never posted, and thought it wasn't as awful as everything else I produced when I was fifteen, and I'd deposit it here. I have not edited it at all. Enjoy.

Firstly, it happens in an alley.

Bad things happen in alleys. Almost exclusively. 

But Derek has always been an exception. 

He didn’t mean for anything to happen. He never does. If he had his way nothing would ever happen to him again and his life would quit changing. He’s lost track of how many times he’s thought ‘this is alright, I could live like this,’ and then something moves and he has to start over. 

Anyway, the alley.

It’s a strange kind of thing. 

He doesn’t know how to classify it, because there are good things, and then there are things that happen to Derek Hale. 

So it’s fine that he’s wary about it, because that’s the road his life has taken up to here, and with all of the bad things behind him, he kind of just wants to breathe now. Easily. He wants to breathe easily, and feel like the world isn’t crushing him anymore, from his shoulders.

A lot of people would wonder about him if they saw him crouched down, staring at a puppy shivering in an alley like it was about to pounce or do something awful.

But he does it anyway. It’s just sitting there, shivering. It’s not even cold outside, _that’s really fucking suspicious._

He had walked down the alley unsuspecting, and he had hardly picked up the butterfly wing heart beat when he kicked a stray rock and it skidded into a pile of papers, and from there came a small _woof._

It wasn’t a yip, it was a _woof_ and it sounded bothered, even annoyed. 

Derek had walked over and kicked some newspapers away unveiling a little ball of fur. 

And here they are. 

It looks sideways at him like it’s suspicious too, like maybe it’s had its fair share of misfortune and it’s just as suspicious of Derek.

Derek would say that he respects that, but it’s a puppy, so he _doesn’t._

Derek narrows his eyes at it and slowly extends a hand. Its ears perk up and its heart beat increases, if that’s even possible. He pulls back a few times still hesitant to reach out and touch, because maybe it would bite him. It wouldn’t actually do anything to him, you know, that werewolf healing and whatnot, but then it would just be another creature that doesn’t want anything to do with him. 

In the end he reaches out, because he’s always been one to try, even when he was horribly misguided, nobody could say he didn’t try. 

There are no signs of aggression. Its ears perked its tail twitching, all signs are go. 

Derek recognizes something of himself inside it. Outwardly he protects himself and wards others away, but inside there’s an optimism that maybe somebody would think he was worth something one day.

Maybe somebody would think that he’s worth enough to take home. 

Derek reaches out with both hands. Its tail thumps against the newspaper making a mess of sound as his hands close around it’s warm little body, and it stops shaking as it settles in when Derek brings it closer to his body. 

He can’t recognize it, it’s just a mutt, not worth much to people that aren’t him. but it’s young and it’s so small and he doesn’t know what it would do without him. 

He thinks that maybe this is something like being the change he wants to see, or that bullshit, he thinks it’s… a sign, he guesses, there isn’t much of another way to say it. He thinks it’s that. Maybe if he just took it home for a little while, gave it a bath and some cold cuts. Dogs can eat lunch meat right? Right?

Right. 

Derek stops by the pet store on his way home. He carries the puppy in the crook of his arm and hauls around a bag of dog food in his other hand, and when he gets back to his loft he has to kick the door open. 

He never locks it, because anyone that would be stupid enough to break in wouldn’t find anything, sometimes he doesn’t even close the door all the way.

He sets it down and it runs off somewhere. He goes into the kitchen and grabs two bowls, he fills one with water and one with kibble. 

He sees it out of the corner of his eye run past the kitchen and into the living room type area, it seems to just be running in circles. 

“Hey,” he says softly when it comes running into the kitchen, it turns to look at him while it keeps walking around in a circle. 

“Come here,” he says quietly. He knows that it’s not trained but it isn’t difficult communicating on account of his lupine side, he appreciates it because he probably wouldn’t even have to speak if he didn’t want to, but he does anyway. He thinks maybe it’s good practice. 

It hops over to him, obviously overcome with excitement, and leans into his hand that’s just waiting to pet.

He doesn’t think about a name, because he doesn’t know if it’ll last, but he does think that his loft doesn’t feel so big anymore. 

.

The next morning Derek gets up to check on how the Camaro is doing at the shop. He almost forgot that he had a little guest but it was impossible because it was snuggle next to him on his bed when he woke up. 

He sighed and ran a hand over its fur, thinking about how he had deposited it on the couch the night before, and that he should have closed the door to his bedroom. It’s not his fault. He didn’t think it could jump. 

Derek showers and gets dressed, all the while it follows him around the loft, ears flopping with its walk that’s actually more of a hop. 

Derek wants to smile. 

He doesn’t though. He laces up his boots and grabs his jacket. He leaves the door cracked when he heads out, just in case it doesn’t want to stick around. 

It would leave too, that’s what dogs do. When a door is open, they go. Derek gets that urge sometimes, but he doesn’t think it comes from such a canine place. 

When he gets there the mechanic tells him that there isn’t anything new to talk about, and Derek glares menacingly until he feels the mechanic has absorbed his displeasure at nothing new getting done. 

Derek walks back to the loft, dragging his feet, because he doesn’t want go back, really, the loft is kind of empty. 

But he doesn’t drag his feet as much as he had the previous day. Maybe that’s progress. 

When he gets back to the loft it’s sitting there on the couch chewing on a magazine like nothing in the world is wrong.

Derek doesn’t really like car magazines so he isn’t that upset about it. He just picks up the little strips of paper and pats the puppy on the head. He grabs a book and sits next to it on the couch and they both go through pages for a while until Derek falls asleep. 

He wakes up and it’s curled into his hip, he rests his hand on it, his fingers cover most of its body, but he’s sure it feels heavier than that. 

He could use something like this maybe. Not a solution, but a distraction from how solitary everything is. 

He feels like an island. In a way he’s always been one, even before, when he had a family and friends, he was always firstly independent. 

He just had connections then. 

But Derek knows that he is, if nothing else, a man that’s burned all his bridges. 

.

The next day he avoids the mechanics, and takes it out to the preserve. 

He doesn’t worry about it wandering away, because he knows every inch of his old home, it couldn’t run away if it tried. 

Not that Derek would stop it if it didn’t want to come back with him. 

But when they get there and Derek sets it down on the forest floor it looks up at him for a moment, wags its tail, and then sits down, like it’s waiting for him to do something. 

“Go on,” Derek says, waving his hand. “Go run,” he says. 

It hops up like it was waiting for permission, and then starts to run around excitedly without direction like it had done at the loft. 

It stops to relieve itself, and Derek finds out that it’s a girl. 

He thinks about what to name her, but then he stops himself. Maybe he won’t even keep her. Maybe she doesn’t even want to stay. Derek isn’t the most exciting person. he’s had enough excitement for a life time and he’s really content with living a quiet life. 

The only thing he has in his future is maybe moving out of the loft one day, and into a different house. Something a little less rough around the edges. He doesn’t want people to think that he’s a criminal anymore, and he thought maybe if he stopped living like one. 

It’s not like he’d actually like to be a part of the community, he’d just like to not be shunned by it is all. He’s spent so much of his life feeling like an outcast he’s kind of tired of it, is all. 

He watches her bound off into the trees. 

Derek sits down and waits for her to come back, he isn’t sure how he knows she will, but he’s positive.

He can hear her running around the forest crunching up leaves and stumbling over tree roots and it makes him laugh. 

She gets excited over such little things. She is a little thing though, so Derek kind of understands.

Derek leans back against a tree and listens to the sounds of his old home. He closes his eyes and he hears bird wings and heart beats. Some from in the sky, his own, and hers from where she’s tromping off in the trees. 

He likes to listen to heart beats. He likes it when they’re calm and even because they’re the most honest things, people can’t control their hearts, it’s the other way around, they tell him everything he needs to know. When people are afraid of him, when they like him, when they lie to him, he knows. 

But what he likes most of all is picking up heart beats of animals, guessing what they are, what they’re doing. They’re faster than human heartbeats, and more interesting. 

He can pick out hers even though she’s probably awhile away. 

He can pick out birds nesting in trees and he can pick out squirrels running around trying to accomplish something. 

The strangest thing is that they all know he’s there, but none of them seem to mind. 

He likes that the most, that he can just blend in and become a part of the leaves on the ground, that even though he’s a predator they all know not to worry, he’s not anything to be worried about. 

If only humans were the same way though. But out in the world he’s not supposed to communicate through instinct and heartbeat, even though they’re the most honest things he knows. 

After a while Derek feels like he should head home. It’s getting dark outside and Derek knows better than anybody what happens when it gets dark. 

He goes walking after her, easily picking up her heartbeat and the little rhythmic thumping of her feet. He likes that, it sounds excitable and fresh. 

He finds her, a little ball of movement tromping after things he can’t see, chasing her shadow. 

“Come here,” he says softly with some enthusiasm in his voice. 

He taps hits his hand against his thigh and she comes walking over wagging her tail slowly and then pawing at his pants leg.

He bends down to pick her up. each time Derek does he gets surprised at how little she is, but also how solid she is, and how warm. She tries to burrow into his arms but only gets so far, eventually ending up on her back with her paws moving lazily in the air, fully expecting to not be put down. 

Derek doesn’t mind. 

She makes little puppy noises as he carries her home, and shoves her nose in between his arm and his chest, because she’s cold or because it’s comforting maybe. 

He likes to think that he can be comforting to something. It makes him feel… well it makes him feel.

.

Derek is in the frozen food isle contemplating the pros and cons of frozen chicken alfredo vs. frozen spaghetti and meatballs. 

Of course chicken alfredo is something different, like a jump in his routine, but spaghetti is reliable, he knows what to expect and he knows he’ll like it, but he’s also had frozen spaghetti at least four times in the last month-

“What are you doing, put that down.”

Derek turns around slowly, he recognizes the voice but it doesn’t make sense to him. Stiles is standing there anyway, because he defies logic. 

Stiles looks at him accusingly as if Derek had done something wrong, and Derek is who he is, so he wouldn’t be surprised if he unknowingly had done something wrong like accidentally sleep stalked Stiles or something he wouldn’t put it past himself even though he was pretty sure he’d been in his loft and his dog… _the_ dog had been with him all night. 

“Do you seriously eat that stuff?” Stiles asks flailing at the boxes in his hands. 

“Wha- Well… yeah.”

Derek is confused. He’s well aware of Stiles’ war on cholesterol on behalf of his father and everything but Derek is a werewolf he doesn’t need to worry about such benign things as nutrition. 

“You are going to die. Do you know that? Are you trying to commit suicide by MSG? How do you still have abs?” Stiles asks animatedly. “Wait, it’s been awhile, you still have abs right?”

Derek turns around fully and lifts his shirt up to check, they were there the last time he had changed his shirt, he’s sure. 

“Oh… yeah. You still absolutely have… yep those are there.” Stiles flails, and looks down at his shoes. “Anyway, you should definitely get some real food, like meat. You like meat right? So if you have a microwave you probably have a stove,,, or you could eat it raw. I don’t know, werewolves man.”

“Uh…”

“Seriously put it down, Derek.” Stiles walks over and takes the boxes out of his hands. “Frozen food bad. Fresh food good. Real food, yum.” Stiles says as he’s backing away, rounding the corner of the next aisle 

Derek listens to his steps as he walks to the other side of the store, the farther he gets the more confused Derek becomes about what Stiles thought he was accomplishing.

Derek drops the Chicken Alfredo into his basket anyway, because he’ll always have abs. 

He does pick up some bananas on his way to the register though. 

.

She starts getting antsy after a while, and Derek doesn’t totally understand. 

It’s only been two weeks, and Derek’s afraid that what he had at first was a toned down version, that she was just getting used to being where she was, that this is the actual version of her that Derek’s going to get, but after a bit he dismisses that, because he can feel the rampant energy running through her that wasn’t there before. 

It strikes Derek later at night looking out his window, the moon is almost full, and it’ll be complete by the weekend. 

“Oh,” he says. Because he’s had a whole lifetime to get used to the energy that pulses through him about this time every month, he didn’t think she would feel it, he actually didn’t think about the full moon at all, because nobody really needs him for it anymore. 

When it gets tough for Isaac sometimes he goes down and they meet at the preserve but he’s gotten better at dealing with it now, he only comes to Derek for the odd favor here or there. 

She probably can’t contain it. It must be too much for her, she must be about ready to start busting out of her skin, he remembers when he was little and he couldn’t take it, he had to run around, run it out. 

So he takes her back to the preserve and chases her down the trail he used to use when he was younger.

It feels different though, not as heavy as the other memories he has from before. Maybe it’s because it only revolves around him, maybe it’s because he hasn’t thought about it in years, maybe it’s because he can only focus on how well she’s keeping up with him and trying not to trip over her when she weaves in between his feet. 

Derek had always wanted a dog when he was little, his mother had told him _“If you’re good, maybe.”_

Derek smiles at that memory too. 

.

It’s Saturday, and even though the sun is in the sky she hops around and tears at things like the moon is already up. 

Derek gets vivid flash backs of when he first bit the betas. None of them chewed on his shoes strings though, thank god. 

He doesn’t actually mind that she chews on his shoe strings, he thinks it’s kind of cute. 

An obnoxious ringing comes from his bedside table, originating from the phone everyone made him get when he got increasingly harder to contact. 

He keeps it in there, he doesn’t touch it or take it with him. For all they yelled at him to get it, it’s stayed silent for a long long time. 

He doesn’t recognize the number, because he never bothered with it enough to program numbers into his phone.

“Hello?”

_“Oh, you answered, cool.”_

“Isaac?”

“Yeah, I uh…”

“What, Isaac?”

“Well, I was wondering if you were doing anything tonight, you know, with the full moon and stuff?”

“No, not really. I thought I’d go down to the preserve, maybe.”

“Oh, you mind if I tag along maybe?”

“No, I don’t care. Meet me there at nine.”

Derek hangs up without saying goodbye. 

.

“What is that?” Isaac asks. 

“You work at a vets office, isn’t it obvious?” Derek sneers. 

He doesn’t actually mean to, but he does. Especially because Derek’s the alpha and he can make his own choices. And also a little because Isaac is the only one left in his pack, save Peter who probably isn’t even around anymore, and he doesn’t see him very often at all. 

“When did you get a dog?” Isaac asks. 

Derek doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t feel ready to claim ownership. 

“What’d you have in mind?” Derek asks. 

“I just wanted to run around for a while,” Isaac says quietly, face turned toward the ground.

Derek almost asks why he didn’t call Scott, but he doesn’t because he’s afraid maybe next time he would. 

“Is she going to be okay?” Isaac asks. “Like… I’m not going to, like…”

“Eat her? Do you think you’ll go so out of control that you’re going to eat a puppy?”

Isaac looks down at the ground again, sheepish. 

“You’re much better than that.” Derek says. He tries to say it offhandedly but he means it. He doesn’t think that Isaac hears that much, and he should. He would, if he came around more often. 

Derek takes off into the woods, she trails after him, Isaac trials after her, they make it a fair ways in before they have to stop to let her catch her breath. 

“What’s her name?” Isaac asks. 

“She doesn’t have one,” Derek says. 

“How can you not give your dog a name?”

Again, Derek doesn’t answer. 

Isaac doesn’t ask any more questions. It’s either because he’s not that interested, or that he thinks something’s up and he doesn’t want to be a part of it. 

Derek understands either way. 

Derek leans back against a tree like he had a while before, and watches Isaac roll around with her. Isaac isn’t a puppy, his moves are less wild and more graceful, and out of all of them, through everything, Derek’s still glad he chose him. 

Derek’s made a lot of strange choices, but he doesn’t regret that one. 

Derek looks at the puppy flailing on the ground, he doesn’t regret that one either. 

.

The next morning Derek wakes up in his bed with an absence of puppy beside him. 

He walks out into the living area to find Isaac splayed out on his couch with her fast asleep on his chest. 

Derek’s lips quirk up a little, not because he meant to. 

Derek goes out to check on the Camaro, and stare at the mechanic with distaste. By the time he gets back with breakfast, Isaac is gone. 

.

It’s a practical thing to do. Derek should do it. Derek is at his very being a practical man, he just gets frazzled when he can’t keep track of everything. 

But he only has one thing to keep track of, and this would make it so much easier. Not that it’s hard in the first place. But still, it’s practical. 

Derek catches a look of his reflection in the window display he’s staring at intensely. He should probably go in, and stop staring at it like he’s been insulted. 

He pushes the door open and a bell jingles above him causing him to jump a little. 

The clerk at the register looks partially interested in him and partially interested in the magazine that’s down on the counter. 

Derek walks past ignoring him anyway, going to the sale rack at the back of the store that was advertised up front. 

There are a lot of colors. He doesn’t like the bright ones, the bright blues, reds, yellows, they annoy him like an itch, but they’re the only thing available. 

He turns around disappointed a little, until he realizes that he’s facing the non-sale items and they are so much nicer, holy fuck. 

Most of the leashes are leather, Derek likes that. Leather is sturdy, it’s easy to wash, and it hides dirt, and they come in more subtle colors. 

Derek finds himself reaching for a reddish brown near the bottom of the shelf that has the collar attached to it. Swinging from the little ring is an identity tag, nice, pentagonal and silver, just waiting to be written on. 

Derek doesn’t think about it right now. The leash and collar set is easily three times the price of the ones on the sale rack, but Derek doesn’t care. It’s not like he doesn’t have the money. 

He goes up and tosses them down on the counter, pulling out his wallet.

“You know we have a sale…” the clerk cuts himself off when he catches Derek’s glare and takes the card from his hand.

“Have a good…” The rest fades out after him as he walks out with the leash and collar in hand, forgoing the bag and staying in there longer. 

Derek is looking down at the ground, not watching where he’s going when he runs into something, and it says _“Oof.”_

Stiles flails backwards his arms pin wheeling for balance as Derek reaches out and grabs the front of his t-shirt pulling him right side up.

“Hey, thanks,” Stiles says, “but you’re the one who knocked me over, so no thanks.” He brushes himself off even though he didn’t even hit the ground, Derek stopped questioning Stiles a while ago. 

“What are-“ Stiles stops short when he catches what’s in Derek’s hand. “Uh…”

“I was just out for a walk,” Derek says. And he was. He had grown tired of threatening the mechanic and he thought he would take a stroll before he went back and threatened the mechanic some more. And maybe he would grab lunch after. He likes the diner down on that side of town. 

“A walk around the pet store?”

“Hmph.”

Derek thought maybe Isaac would have said something about him having a dog to Scott, and Scott would have told Stiles, who wouldn’t have cared. 

“I got a dog,” Derek says. 

“A…” Stiles’ face cracks into a grin and it slowly grows until it threatens to split his face in half, “dog?”

Derek rubs his forehead because the muscles that control his eyebrows are sore from all this exertion. 

“Yes.”

“Wow. Who fetches in that situation? Do you guys howl at the moon together? Can you speak to each other?” Stiles laughs for a moment at that before he stops. “Wait, can you?”

“No.” 

Derek starts to walk down the sidewalk in the direction of the mechanic, and he hears Stiles’ footsteps following after him. 

“Not even a little bit?” Stiles asks. 

Derek considers telling him but maybe not at the expense of all the relentless taunting. It doesn’t get to him but the sound of Stiles’ voice gets repetitive after a while. 

Stiles takes his silence as an affirmative though. 

“Wait, seriously? Cause that’s so cool, I mean I see how you guys could understand each other on an instinctual level you know? Like mostly non-verbal? Which is your communication style of choice obviously.”

Derek keeps quiet still hoping that maybe Stiles will talk himself out. 

“See? Just like I was saying,” Stiles says motioning towards Derek in a way that would be too much on anyone else. 

Kind of like Stiles’ puppy paw hands would be too big on anyone else’s body, and his Bambi eyes too wide and everything else just too long, but he’s an odd match of everything that’s disproportionate, he’s almost the island of misfit toys incarnate. 

Derek would smile at that but it’s kind of significant actually. He wonders what Stiles is doing downtown but he knows it’s probably because everyone else is trying to heal into each other, it’s creepy and scary and he and Stiles are probably the only ones that are trying to go it on their own. Scott and Isaac, Lydia and Allison, they’re all so dependent on each other it makes Derek sick sort of. He wonders how they’ll ever be okay on their own. 

He notices that Stiles has been quiet for a long time, but he’s still walking beside him, keeping pace looking down at the ground with his hands in his pockets. 

He knows that’s not what’s going on here, that Stiles isn’t walking with him because they’re the last two left, the only ones yet to pair off, it’s because they’re two islands. 

They can be okay on their own. 

It just gets lonely, and vast sometimes. 

Derek doesn’t say anything when he gets to the mechanics and Stiles keeps on walking like Derek wasn’t even there. 

.

Different day, same threat to the mechanic, Derek gets tired of being so actively agitated when he’s not really. It’s just what people expect out of him, and then they act weird when he doesn’t deliver. 

It’s almost like they don’t want him to act nicer than he is so they have something to complain about, so they don’t have to let him in, so they don’t need to have one more thing they need to worry about. 

Derek’s always had the opposite problem. 

She’s sleeping on the couch when He finds her. he thinks that’s a good idea. 

He grabs a book from a shelf and picks to her up, she yawns at him agitatedly until he settles her back down on his lap. She burrowed her head into his t-shirt liking the way it smelled. 

Stiles was right, of course, he understood why she did that. She probably understood him too, more than she should, had he been a human. But he wasn’t, and he’d never felt more ashamed of that than in the last few years, what he’d seen of his own kind, how much people were doing it wrong. 

It’s a gift. His parents told him so. But no one respected it that way. 

But then again, he thinks maybe being an alpha would be a gift to people who aren’t him. 

Derek wishes that, just for a little while, he could understand what his life looks like on the outside. He probably wouldn’t change anything about himself, because he doesn’t actually care that much. But he’d just like to know. 

He can’t remember the last page he left off at, he doesn’t really care. 

He just doesn’t really want to be there now. He wants to be somewhere where it’s so impossible to think about all those things. He wants to be over the moon. 

He used to want things like having his family back. But when his eyes are closed at night, that’s not what he asks for anymore. He doesn’t ask for anything _back,_ he just asks for things to get _better._

It’s a painful kind of progress-

“Wow, you didn’t even notice me come in.”

Derek’s head snaps up, and he launches his upper body forward, getting into a defensive position, catapulting her off of Derek’s lap onto the floor. 

She doesn’t actually move when she gets there. Kind of rolls over and goes back to sleep. Derek nudges her with his foot but she just yawns at him again. 

“Look, you did that,” he says. 

“You were serious,” Stiles says.

“Why would I lie about that?”

“Not lie about it, _joke_ about it. I thought it was too good to be true.”

“Why would I buy a leash and collar if I wasn’t serious?” Derek asks. He hasn’t actually used them, he trusts her on her own. But if he ever does bring her somewhere in town he’d have to. 

His puppy rolls over onto her back showing Derek her belly, Derek gently uses the toe of his boot to scratch it for her. 

“Ow-oh that’s….. ah,” Stiles says. Derek doesn’t understand the noises coming out of Stiles’ mouth. 

Derek reaches down for her. Her ears are flopping all over the place. Derek wonders whether they’ll stand up or not. 

“What’s its name?” Stiles asks. 

“Her. Her name.”

“What’s _her_ name?”

Derek’s eyes flick from her back to Stiles quickly, trying to think of something to say. 

“Uh…”

“You… you haven’t named her have you.”

“I wasn’t actually planning on keeping her.”

“What were you planning on doing with her?”

“I don’t know, it was a spur of the moment decision, I hadn’t planned on much of anything.”

“Do you have stuff?” Stiles asks accusingly.

“I have dog bowls, dog food. A _leash and collar,”_ Derek says getting defensive.

He can take care of her, He lifts her up so that she’s at eye level with him. She licks the tip of his nose. He can take care of her. _Yes he can, yes he can._

Stiles makes a strangled noise from off in the corner. Derek really does not know what’s wrong with him. 

Derek looks over at Stiles who seems to be clutching at his chest. Derek thinks maybe he’s got heart burn. He feels the tips of his mouth descending. 

He hadn’t realized he was smiling. 

“Do you have any toys for her? A dog bed?” Stiles asks. 

“Well-uh…” Derek says, he looks down at the magazine on the floor that she had been chewing through, he thought that would last her awhile before he had to come up with something else. She also likes his shoe laces. He doesn’t mind that as much as he thought he should. 

Stiles’ shoulders drop, and he looks at Derek like _how do you get on without me_ and Derek really doesn’t know what to do with that.

He tucks his puppy into his arm and she goes back to sleep. 

“You got the leash and collar?” Stiles asks.

“Yeah,” Derek nods back to the hole in his wall, where they’re hanging off the jagged remains of a brick. 

“Oh lord,” Stiles says, dropping his face down into his hands. “You grab those. We’re going to the pet store. Wait, before we go can I use your bathroom?”

.

Stiles tugs the sleeve of Derek’s shirt as he cradles his puppy to his chest. this isn’t the pet store he went to earlier, it’s bigger and there are a lot of people in blue polos walking around behind them just waiting for Derek to look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

He’s starting to feel cornered. He knows the hair on the back of his neck is standing up. 

“Derek. Calm, okay, you faced down a fucking lizard monster, you _are_ the werewolf extraordinaire, you don’t have to be afraid of them.”

Derek forces his shoulders down from around his ears. 

Derek grabs the leash from where it’s fallen out of his arms again, he bunches it up and tucks it between her body and his chest. 

She’s still sleeping, still making soft little puppy noises that tickle his arm hair. 

Derek scratches her head with his index finger, she makes a pleased sound through her sleep. 

Stiles is staring at them again. But it doesn’t make him nervous like all the others do. 

Stiles walks closer and flicks the little ID tag that hangs down from her collar. 

“They have one of those machines here, we could get it engraved if you wanted to,” Stiles suggests. 

Derek knows that’s Stiles’ gentle way of saying that she needs a name. And Derek thinks so too. She deserves a name. He just doesn’t know which one to give her. 

“You could name her Jenny,” Stiles suggests, “or Bella, or Scooby? Hey, you could name her Red!”   
Stiles laughs to himself at that, probably thinking he’s pretty clever. Derek runs a finger down the reddish brown spots that break up the bigger patches of black and white all over her coat. 

“Wait, seriously?” Stiles says, “you know that was a joke right?”

“No,” Derek says. He thinks he saw the engraving center over by the entrance where they came in, he walks off in that direction with Stiles tromping after him.

“You could go for something person like instead? Maybe like, Tina? Or Miranda?”

Derek just tunes him out and unfastens the collar from around Red’s neck. He’ll laugh about it later, and probably a long time after this maybe. It’s about time that he’s able to find some humor in this whole thing. It does feel right, because wolves and red go together, or so he’s been told. 

Stiles watches him hand over the collar to the person behind the counter, who probably thinks that Red is a nice, if not a little unique, completely sincere name, and anyway there are no blocks on colors anymore, not after Beyonce. 

While they wait for the ID tag they go around and check things off the list that Stiles has in his mind. He’s pushing around a cart with some kind of determination. He spends a long time in the toy aisle, picking out the weirdest, loudest things he can find, also a tug of war rope, a chew toy made out of tire, and a puppy couch. 

Derek doesn’t even know. _Puppy couch._

Stiles thought it was classy. 

Derek thinks that after getting his dog a puppy couch he wouldn’t need a dog bed, but apparently it doesn’t work that way, and that’s like being forced to sleep on a sofa, because your parents are denying you a bed. 

Derek picks out a soft one, medium sized. He’s not actually sure how big Red is going to turn out to be. He can just buy her another one when she grows out of it. 

He also buys a dog brush even though she sheds, and then Stiles takes him over to the pet shampoo. 

“I know she’s soft now, but she won’t be if you don’t keep her clean,” Stiles says. “And don’t skimp on this.”

Derek looks from the cart to Stiles and back. It’s practically full, and Stiles had to relinquish cart duties to Derek because it got too heavy, now Red was riding, drowsy eyed in Stiles’ arms. 

“Does it look like I’ve skimped on anything?” Derek asks. _”Anything?_ And why do you think I wouldn’t wash her? I shower myself, daily, you know,” he says accusingly. 

“But you have that kind of generic shampoo that hobos buy at the dollar store, you can’t let your habits carry over to the innocent and unsuspecting,” Stiles says, patting Red.

“Why were you looking in my shower?” Derek says grabbing the most expensive oatmeal concoction off the shelf. 

“Um…” Stiles keeps petting Red, and his heart rate goes up as he walks away. 

.

When they get back to the loft Stiles takes Red inside, new collar and all, and leaves Derek to haul all the bags.

Derek doesn’t mind actually, he knows he’s stronger than Stiles, and so Stiles uses that to his advantage. 

Stiles doesn’t use that anywhere else, though, Derek notices. Not even with Scott, he’s always rushing around, trying to prove himself. 

But not to Derek. 

So he just leaves it be. 

When he gets inside he drops all the bags on the coffee table and when he turns around Stiles is spread out starfish-like on the couch with Red hopping around him.

She zeros in on the thick car magazine Derek left on the floor, and then she pounces on it, and continues to chew. 

“I told you that’d be fine,” Derek says. But he starts taking toys out of bags and throwing them at her anyway, some squeak, and one honks, and a lot of them bounce, but she continues to chew like nothing is happening. 

“Hmph,” Stiles says, he cuts his eyes at her. “She’s manipulating, is what she is. She gets you to buy her stuff, with her cuteness, you know.”

“She’s teething.” Derek says, “She probably doesn’t need anything fancy, I think she was just fine,” Derek hefts the special puppy formula kibble over his shoulder and putting it in the cabinet under the sink, even though she already _has_ dog food, perfectly _adequate_ dog food that was serving her real _well._

(When Stiles had seen the total at the cash register he had flinched and looked over at Derek with a remorseful look on his face, until he saw Derek just take out his card and swipe it like it was no big deal.)

“Ha,” Stiles huffed. “You wouldn’t even know where to start without me. You don’t know how to have nice things.” Stiles lifts his arms up and crosses them behind his head, stretching his legs out in front of him, he doesn’t look like he’ll be moving anytime soon. Derek doesn’t really care. He goes to sit down on the carpet in front of the couch, he throws the magazine across the room and tries to get Red to start a tug-of-war.

Derek doesn’t put any effort into it. Just flicks his wrist one way, and then another, he can yank her around with no trouble at all, while she’s putting everything she has into leaning away from him and trying get the rope out of his hands, the little growling noises she makes touch something inside of him, something playful. 

Maybe Stiles was right, Derek thinks. Derek had spent such a long time taking responsibility for things and nothing else. He would just come and try to clean everything up and then when it was all done people would walk away to live out the enjoyable parts of their existence somewhere else. 

He doesn’t really know what to do with all this because it’s all supposed to be lighthearted and enjoyable, it really has nothing to do with the suffocating sense of duty that Derek would feel constricting his chest in the past couple of years, and if he didn’t get that when he was dealing with something then he wouldn’t waste his time. 

But here he is feeling free and light and able to breathe.

After a while Red gets tired, she walks over and climbs in his lap where his legs are crisscrossed and drops her head onto his thigh. She gives a big sigh and looks up at him. 

Derek flicks the little ID tag hanging from her collar. It swings and shines silver from the light coming in the window.

On the front in big letters it simply says 

**RED**

On the back in smaller print it has Derek’s phone number and his name, looking small and shy compared to the bold statement on the other side. Maybe Stiles would find it funny to think about Derek being small and shy, but when he considers it himself it doesn’t seem like such a long shot. 

“You want dinner?” Derek asks. Red lifts her head and her tail starts thumping against his leg. “Yeah? You want dinner?” 

She stumbles off of his lap in her excitement, and gets down in a playful stance waiting for him to come after her. 

Derek slaps his hands down on the floor and she jumps around again.

Stiles makes a strangled sound from the couch. 

Derek doesn’t even look up anymore, he’s used to it.

Stiles sticks around for a long time until the sun has gone down and Red is curled up on her puppy couch, and not her dog bed (because there’s no way he had to buy both, goddammit Stiles) and Derek has almost gone through all of the pages in his book. 

“I guess I should be on my way,” Stiles says. 

He gets up and stretches his legs, he had been flipping through all of the material under the coffee table, books, magazines, pamphlets. Derek doesn’t know how he did it for so many hours, but he did. 

“I guess so,” Derek says. He gets up too and follows Stiles out. They walk slowly, obviously stalling, but they pretend they don’t notice it because they don’t want to talk about it. 

“You really need a TV Derek,” Stiles says. “What am I supposed to do here?” 

Derek has a comment on the tip of his tongue that Stiles doesn’t _have_ to come over, that Derek shouldn’t be worried about what Stiles has to _do_ here. 

But he doesn’t. Because Derek can almost smell it, sweet and bitter like melancholy, and if he could scent himself like that he would probably recognize it too. 

It’s loneliness.


End file.
